Traditional forms of producing energy, such as using nuclear reactors or burning fossil fuels, have many harmful side effects, including radioactive waste, air pollution, acid rain, and global warming. As a result, there has been the beginning of a strong movement in recent years towards cleaner energy sources like sunlight, wind and hydrogen-based chemical reactions.
Sunlight (solar energy) can be transformed into electricity by using photovoltaic cells (“PV cells”)—“photo” meaning light and “voltaic” meaning electricity. Wind Turbines (like windmills) turn the power of the wind into electricity by letting wind spin the blades to turn a generator that produces electricity. Solar energy and wind energy are completely renewable resources that are free and abundant. Natural gas, propane and other hydrogen containing fuels can supply energy without producing significant harmful emissions or toxins when transformed, for example, in a “fuel cell” which extracts the energy by a chemical reaction rather than by burning the fuel. Electrical energy from PV cells, wind turbines or fuel cells can be used as a direct source of electricity. PV cells, wind power, and fuel cells are known as “non-traditional energy technologies” or “New Energy Technologies.”
Increased use of New Energy Technologies can make the Earth's air and water cleaner and slow or reverse the harmful effects of global warming. The environmental advantages of New Energy Technologies are well known, uncontested and vitally important.
New Energy Technology systems have been widely unavailable due to cost, consumer unfamiliarity, inaccessible financing options, unavailable expertise required to specify the options and configurations of available New Energy Technology systems for a particular residential, commercial or industrial use.
Among the major impediments to decreased cost is the lack of sufficient volume of demand. There is a ‘chicken and egg’ or ‘catch-22’ problem with developing increased demand and lowering the cost of the New Energy Technology systems. The greater the demand, the lower the unit cost; however, the high unit cost inhibits greater demand.
Introduction to and, design, configuration, financing, and installation implementation of a New Energy Technology system require specialized knowledge and equipment that is not readily available to even sophisticated commercial or industrial potential consumers. If a consumer wanted to install a New Energy Technology system, it requires finding a trained energy consultant (often called a “specifier”) who would generally have to conduct an on-site assessment. The specifier would then have to take measurements in and around the structure, calculate how much energy is needed under various conditions, and determine what types of New Energy Technology systems are available by referencing a myriad of large specification books on industry standards and manufacturer specifications, which are difficult and costly to keep up to date because of the time and cost of publication, the difficulties of distribution and the speed with which the New Energy Technologies have been evolving. The specifier then must then have ready access locally, or must bring in from elsewhere, the electricians and installers who are trained to implement the installation. Also, although the New Energy Technology systems have lower variable costs than traditional electricity sources, the initial capital investment required of any individual purchaser is a significant obstacle for most. Therefore it is generally necessary to include in the mix of product and service providers necessary to sell New Energy Technology systems a financier who can provide the financing which can be repaid over time (or the lifetime of the system). In order to minimize the costs of financing, there needs to be sufficient volume and standardized financial and implementation criteria.
The whole process is complex and can take many days, weeks, months or years, and requires significant manual calculation and research on the part of various people with different specialty backgrounds and training. To date, it has only been done one customer at a time rather than in an automated way on a mass-scale, further contributing to the chicken and egg problem of insufficient demand and high prices.
As in most new technological developments, there are different applications of the New Energy Technologies for different segments of the market. However, it has been difficult and expensive for manufacturers of the technologies to locate the appropriate market segments for the narrow applications best suited to their particular technologies. One way to aggregate demand overall is to automatically and cost-effectively segment potential customers using demographics obtained from databases in conjunction with specific information provided by the potential consumers. However, currently, even if a consumer was motivated to explore the process, very few consumers even understand the units of measurement necessary to calculate the basic numbers a specifier would need to use to determine that consumer's needs.
Because of the complexity involved and the vast geographic spread of potential customers, the costs of acquisition and education of potential new customers are also very high. It has proven difficult or impossible to identify significant numbers of potential customers with some knowledge of New Energy Technologies or to educate significant numbers of people or companies who are good candidates for New Energy Technologies. The minimal demand keeps the cost of the systems high further discouraging demand and contributing to the chicken and egg problem described above.
Aware of both the extraordinary environmental promise of the New Energy Technologies and the problems of high cost and insufficient demand, many governmental entities offer or plan to offer incentives for consumers or manufacturers of New Energy Technology systems. However, due to the plethora of different governmental entities (federal, state, local, utility regulatory boards, public utilities, private utilities, tax authorities, etc.) and the many different types of incentives (e.g. subsidies, rebates, tax credits, depreciation allowances, pollution credits, etc.), it is extremely difficult for any consumer, manufacturer or distributor of a New Energy Technology system to understand or know the complete financial implications of a purchase, or to manipulate the parameters to provide a meaningful choice to a consumer.
In addition, the availability of specifiers, retailers, installers, and financiers is still scarce, extremely fragmented, inconsistent and inconvenient to access. Moreover, it is still difficult or impossible to identify and locate potential customers in a cost-effective manner and in sufficient numbers to use the demand to lower the costs.
The cost of educating significant numbers of potential consumers about the available technologies, their applications, and how they might be customized to a particular user's needs has been prohibitively expensive and has been left to non-profit entities with environmental goals. The high cost of educating the population contributes to the insufficient demand for the New Energy Technologies.
Furthermore, currently, energy consultants or specifiers must take all their measurements, do their calculations, consult the manufacturer catalogs, design the proposed system, figure out the financing, and present their customers with a proposal and price information before they even know if their customer will agree to install the system or pay the specifier. Since much of the income comes from commissions on the hardware, specifiers earn no income if the customer ultimately decides not to purchase. However, the specifier has already invested significant time and effort just determining if a customer might be interested. Therefore there is a need for a system which moves the specifier's efforts to a point in time after the customer has received the general outline of a proposal, with prices and costs, and has decided to purchase. The system disclosed herein accomplishes that.
Because of the difficulties described above, and the fact that the costs of purchasing and installing a New Energy Technology system have heretofore been far in excess of the cost of electricity produced by a local electric utility from the burning of highly polluting fossil fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas, there is currently virtually no market for non-polluting New Energy Technology systems. However, by combining the advantages and cost-reducing methods made possible by the system described herein, a mass customization system is disclosed which can create new mass markets for non-polluting New Energy Technology systems. Because the computerized system collects commitments from customers, aggregates the demand of many customers, and mobilizes customers to advocate for political and regulatory changes that make such systems more economically viable, the system creates new markets and is also capable of forecasting where the next viable markets for such systems will be.
For all of the above reasons, it is desirable to provide an automated New Energy Technologies Consulting and Demand Aggregation system (“NETCONDA”) that is easily accessible, widely available, easy to use, and that postpones the specifier's work until after the customer has decided to purchase, creates incentives for potential customers to self-identify or to virally identify others they know who might also be potential customers, aggregates the demand from various different populations of customers, automates the process of specifying a particular customer's needs, reduces the cost of customer education and acquisition, and takes advantage of all available incentives and financing options.